Editorial: Fiscal catastrophe must be averted

After the contentious, drawn-out negotiations, after the two sides have shaken hands, after the terms of the UAW contract, the teacher union or the DPW union contract have been revealed, it’s fair to wonder what the heck took them so long.

We expect to have the same question after President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress come to an agreement on spending cuts and tax revenue increases.

We expect fiscal catastrophe will be averted, somehow, some day.

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Sure, our nation and its economy may drive straight off into the uncharted wild blue yonder on New Year’s Eve.

But we expect that President Obama and Republican members of Congress will settle on something before the economy, like so many cartoon characters, looks down and starts to plummet.

After local negotiations are concluded, after the results are ratified, we recognize that the parameters of a settlement were known going in. Why did it require so much posturing and so many threats?

Likewise, when a settlement is reached in our nation’s Capitol, when a grudging president and grudging Republicans have signed off on an agreement, we’ll wonder, once again, what took so long.

We’ve argued here that the voltage on that third rail called Social Security isn’t all that high; that it can be made solvent with incremental changes and tweaks. Raising the cap on the payroll tax so that high earners continue to pay a payroll tax on the second $100,000 of earnings -- perhaps a few $100,000s past that -- won’t sink the payers or the economy. Likewise, slowing inflation-based increases in Social

Security payments to reflect more accurately actual inflation won’t break recipients. But both measures and a few other tweaks will put it on a sound footing.

The same spirit of incremental adjustment and tweak we believe will be the basis of whatever agreement averts the drive off the precipice. Obama may not get the full tax increase on the wealthy he’s sought so avidly. Republicans may not get the full funding cuts they’ve sought, which is probably a good thing since sudden austerity is not a recipe for sudden growth.

The benefits to an agreement, even one which leaves both sides scowling, will far outweigh the disadvantages to either. Some degree of certainty will return. In Michigan alone for example, millions of dollars in annual cash payments from Washington will be preserved.

So it’s time for both sides to get on with it. The sooner they do, the sooner we can ask them what took so long.